Ready to Order

With the waiter largely offscreen, none of the cheeses are what they seem . . . 

Absorbing his friend’s accident—a taciturn stoicism gone limitless and flagrant—growing increasingly unsettling as midnight strikes and the Gouda appears.

Bystanders switch perspectives as the rubbish becomes the menu incarnate. Mold elementary.

Windscreen marks on his forehead and rinds on his cheeks . . . 

The crash of canned Spam ever-shifting into an unexpected perversion with the Camembert. 

Are you ready to order?

What I’m Reading:

The solipsism of low self-esteem is one of the wonders of the human psyche. So inexplicable is its grip, so binding its influence, it can feel almost mythic. And why not? Myths are what we invent to accommodate the mysteries of nature: our own if not those of our surroundings. Scientists can explain daylight and darkness, gravity and rainfall, but who, after all, can explain why we are born with a need to think well of ourselves, and why, when we don’t, life becomes an exercise in humiliation?

— Vivian Gornick / “Always Inadequate” / The New Yorker